Walk into the Light: 100 Themes
by Arashinobara Jikkankakyoku
Summary: A series of short oneshots written in response to the hundred themes challenge, all set in the future and based around the Neomonarchs and possibly their family.
1. Karma

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**A/N: For Goddessmoon. **

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Karma**_

There is Karma, and there is Destiny.

There are futures decided by choices and lives controlled by fate.

There are people who are free to make their own choices, and others who are puppets to play out the existence lain before them.

Chiba Mamoru was destined to love a gossamer girl in an ethereal dream, and Tsukino Usagi was destined to allow a thousand-year-old spirit swallow her own character and share her soul.

Chiba Mamoru was fated to love a girl with a porcelain face and broken smiles, her joy dimmed and gone as she ascended a crystal throne, and Tsukino Usagi was fated to lose her soul's own essence.

For the destined queen and the fated king, there _was _no Karma; upon them Fate had laid her worn hand on their brows and claimed them as her daughter and son.

There was doubt, sometimes, when the other was galaxies away and even when one took a dance with a visiting lord or lady… that he, or she, would have seen her or him in the same light had fate not woven their lives as she had.

But they both knew they could love none other but each other, though they continued to wonder, she smiling broken smiles, he guarding her shattered soul with delicate care.

Tsukino Usagi loved, loves and will continue to love Chiba Mamoru desperately.

Chiba Mamoru loved, loves and will continue to love Tsukino Usagi unwaveringly.

Together, they wove a future for the people who had choices, and allowed themselves to think that maybe, just maybe, not everything about them was a performance of marionettes and puppets, and that maybe, just maybe, the curtain would fall at their choice and by their reckoning.

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	2. Blue Eyes

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**A/N: For Aristotle-koneko-chan, who warms my feet when the heater is broken down.**

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_**Blue Eyes**_

When I was younger, still flushed with the arrogance of youth, I was a fool: a good-looking, intelligent, eloquently-spoken fool, but a fool nonetheless.

I was my own master, I believed, though I had been unable to call myself in control of my life ever since that fateful night when a princess of gossamer had appeared to me ever-so-gently, soothing the loss of memory and parents.

I would lay my head on her lap, she would stroke my hair gently and we would speak of many things, she never failing to inquire after my wellbeing and my day. I would be charmed by her wittiness, her kindness and beauty, her voice…

By everything, even her dusk-tinted lavender-blue eyes.

As I grew, my awareness of _her_ did as well, and I was soon aware that with my aging, she became more and more agitated, and would later refuse to meet my gaze. The dreams became less a sanctuary and more an invasion; she could not have meant to hurt me, but she did, with her desperate pleas and broken whispers for a crystal of illusions.

Again, I had been seventeen – a year, I believe, of arrogance. Perhaps some might call it self-confidence, but that was exactly what it was; even to the point of hubris! But I digress. All that need be known is that my gossamer princess had demanded a crystal, and a crystal she would receive.

It was on one of these jewel-hunting quests that I encountered an unbelievably _real_ girl when her abysmal test mark encountered my unbelievably _thick _head.

I had rejected her from the start, ever since I had witnessed the two bizarrely-familiar buns on her head, ponytails of butter-gold undulating gracefully as she whirled to meet me and the air caught in my chest.

_Her eyes…_

They were a clear, crystal blue.

There was neither deception nor deceit in her gaze, though plenty of anger, embarrassment and chagrin at the time. The insistent sparkle that one might mistake to be a vapid determination to be happy was in reality, as I discovered later, a depth that held the understanding to life.

**_Again, I find myself carried away with memories… they _can _be fond memories, though I must say that my tendency to preen and strut during them often make me cringe in remembrance. _**

Though I discovered the strange girl's name, she had always been Dumpling Head to me, and I remembered her as such. The reason for the name-calling was not that I had a ridiculous wish to anger her needlessly, though it happened often and oftener, but that I seemed incapable of opening my mind to her:

I looked at her and remembered the red-riddled English test, the large 'thirty-percent' glaring out with mocking cheerfulness; I angered her and saw that 'vapid twinkle' deepen into a faintly-veiled hurt; I saddened her and she walked away, tall in spite of the fat crocodile tears _crocodile tears they _had _to be crocodile tears you see _splashing down her cheeks…

She brought out my shadows; the qualities I was not so proud of were most evident about her –

And all that time, the princess seldom appeared to me, but I could hear her wandering my dreams, crying an unfamiliar name with what even my seldom-feeling heart recognised as love and desperation.

The princess had left me for another. I was furious. I was jealous.

I blamed it all on that Dumpling Head.

If I hadn't met her, I would be more focused on my quest! If I hadn't met her, there would not be these strange, tumbling sensations in my gut! If I hadn't met her, I would not close my eyes and try to remember the princess, but see those stupid, idiotic… _stupid_ clear-blue eyes gazing at me as though she had the right to smile at _me_!

There was nothing deep about her stupid eyes.

There was nothing special about her idiotic hairstyle.

There was nothing charming about the clumsy way she would fail to walk half a block without tripping.

There was nothing beautiful about… _her_.

Within time, my carefully cultivated contempt grew. I believed the clenching in my heart when I encountered her to be immense dislike, and often acted accordingly…

And so it went, until I fell in battle to protect her, and she shed tears over me as my life bled away with the passing moments.

Even then I was fool enough to want to sneer, _crying even now, Dumpling Head._

And then…

And _then_…

_Princess_.

Here my beliefs crumbled to dust, and I was left very lonely. When I returned to myself, healed from dead and deathless slavery to the Dark Kingdom by Her, _Dumpling-Senshi-Princess_, I smiled and didn't let on that I was shattered inside, and how her sweet face, so innocently-tilted towards me, beckoned for a kiss that I could not refuse, though I cursed myself for it later.

How fickle _was_ I?

_What right did she have_ to waltz into _my life_ and smile at me with those damn. Blue. Eyes and destroy my illusions? What right did those damn. Blue. Eyes have, to destroy the aforementioned illusions before mocking me as they became lilac and lavender-tinted sky?

What right?

What _right_?

_What right_!

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Endymion set down the quill and rubbed at his eyes with inkstained hands, heaving a tired sigh.Writing his memoirs involved a lot of revisiting to the past, and soul-searching was always difficult for a man like him; he was so full of shadows and darkness that when he emerged, he sometimes felt ashamed, and often tired enough to sleep for centuries…

"Mamo-chan?"

And he smiled as he felt Serenity's arms encircle him gently, a tender kiss pressed to his temple. Turning abruptly in his chair, Endymion yanked her close; he wanted her to be near now, near enough so he might believe that, for a beautiful, hopeful moment, he deserved her.

Burying his face in tresses of crystal, he felt alarm, then her love and empathy seep through him and his breath hitched in his chest; just like it had those countless years ago when he had first seen her for the second time…

He would be that little boy again, he thought determinedly; soothing fingers combing his hair as he drank in her kiss. He would be the boy who was lonely amidst friends and needy amidst plenty; he would be the boy with his blue-eyed princess.

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**A/N: Review? Begbegbegplease? Here I am batting my eyelashes... aren't I pretty? Pretty enough to leave a review for?**

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	3. Things Left Unsaid

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**A/N: For Jikkankakyoku-chan of the fast-flying needles. May she complete thirty-two feet of scarf in time for Christmas.  
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****Things Left Unsaid**_

They were arguing again; he looming over her sprawled form and drawling words of languid arrogance, she hissing and spitting like an offended kitten, her face twisted with ire.

Turning from the scene, Setsuna closed her eyes in despair. She had known - had always known that they needed to witness the other's ugly side to appreciate the beauty… But every time she watched their crude bickering, she wanted nothing more than to shout at them the memory of their pasts and the vision of their futures.

_What would you say, Mamoru-ouji, if you knew that a thousand years ago you crafted yourself – with hands and fire and blood – the wreath that begged her to bind the two of you in the eyes of the gods?_

No one noticed the green-haired woman's silent departure via a portal of light, her business suit melting into a fuku in colours of black and red as a staff shaped oddly like a key materialized in a gloved hand.

_How would you react, Usagi-hime, if you knew that in a thousand years you will bear him three children as the Neo-Queen, and countless more as you guard the Universe with him ever by your side?_

Sailorpluto massaged her temples wearily; seeing her King and Queen in the early years of their second incarnations always pained her. She could hardly connect the passionate, almost hotheaded Endymion with the cold upperclassman, and Usagi was a child long-buried underneath Serenity's impossible-to-ruffle feathers; feathers that had been smoothed over from their state of chaotic fuzz before being replaced by wings of royalty.

_Will you laugh or merely disbelieve if I declared you soulmates; two parts so closely-bonded that all laws were broken for your sake – for this chance you are wasting heedlessly?_

It would not be wasted, of course, the senshi of Time knew; she would guide the soulmates down the path to the Crystal Millennium… and later, when all was broken and shattered, Cosmos and Chaos would join to maintain the Balance of the Universe, and everything would be born anew.

It was a cycle; a cycle that would not likely be broken, but left to weave its own way through the tapestry of fate.

Even Destiny, though familiar with the two, shied away from them at times.

_What would you say if you knew?_

"You'd call me crazy," she answered herself, and settled back to her ceaseless vigil once more. "I don't much appreciate that, so I'm not going to tell you," she informed the absent prince and princess.

_In spite of my guiding hand, the path is yours alone to discover; yours alone to touch and properly decide upon._

_May Lady Fortune allay Fate's demands; luck to you both.

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_**A/N: Review, onegai! For Jikkan's sake, but mainly for mine. /points at the sign around her neck saying 'review whore'/. I think I've just ruined the tone to this drabble... ah well. It's mine, I can do what I want. /cackles insanely/. I seem to be doing that more and more as time goes by... am I going senile? Time to panic, perhaps? ...whatever, just review. Beggin' yew.

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